In conventional photography, a user exposes a photographic film in a camera and conveys (either personally, by mail, or some other delivery service) the exposed film to any convenient processing center. The processing center then chemically develops the film to form permanent hardcopy images (typically in the form of photographic negatives on the original film and/or photographic prints, or photographic positives in the case of reversal processed film). The hardcopy images are then conveyed back to the user (often by the user personally picking them up at the processing center). If a user desires to share the images with others without giving up their own hardcopies, they typically go through the highly tedious and time consuming effort of designating which hardcopy images are desired to be shared, returning the designated hardcopy images to the processor to produce further hardcopies, and conveying the further hardcopies to the person(s) with whom they wish to share. If later it is desired to share the images with other persons, the same process must typically be repeated. In fact, so much effort and time is required that most users will simply not bother with multiple image sharing.
It has been appreciated that users can conveniently distribute multiple image copies in little time, by scanning the hardcopy image on a home scanner to generate corresponding digital image signals, and then forwarding one or more copies of the digital image signal to others by means of electronic mail (such as over the Internet). Furthermore, the recent advent of services such as KODAK PICTURE DISK available from Eastman Kodak Company and other film processors, which allows a user to obtain a digital image signal of images of processed film on a disk for a modest price, even eliminates the need for the user to own a scanner. The availability of a digital image signal additionally allows a user to conveniently store, manipulate, and display or print copies of the images as desired at the user's location using conventional computer equipment
U.S. Pat. No. 5,272,549 discloses a system in which a customer can connect his computer to a remote print or copy center to retrieve digital image signals of the customer's images. Those digital image signals are described as having been obtained on a scanner at the customer's location with the storage media then being shipped to the print or copy center, or obtained on a scanner at the remote print or copy center. Presumably, any media scanned at the copy center is identified by a manually entered identification for a particular customer so that customer can later retrieve them. Similarly, subsequent U.S. Pat. No. 5,477,353 describes a system in which one or more photographer units can connect to a centralized laboratory unit (containing a film processor, scanner, and printer). The '353 patent system is constructed with the purpose that a given user's films are processed and scanned at one central processing center, each assigned a unique identification code, and retrieved by that user at his remote terminal using the identification code. The retrieved images can then be manipulated by the user and printed at the central processing center. The customer identification is read off a magnetic tape which has been affixed to a film bag carrying the film, at the processing center. No instructions are provided in the magnetic tape since none are required in the system of the '353 patent.
The systems of the '549 or '353 patents, require that all digital image storage media (in the '549 patent) or hardcopy film (in the case of the '353 patent) carrying images from multiple users, must be conveyed to only one central processing center. This is inconvenient and may cause delays in such a system implemented on a country wide or worldwide basis.
A serious problem with systems of the type of the '549 or '353 patents, is that digital image signals represent very large amounts of data. This is particularly true if one wishes to maintain a sufficiently high resolution in digital images such that they approach photographic quality. For example, such images can easily be 1,000 by 2,000 pixels, and easily require several megabytes of data. This presents a real problem in situations where many images may need to be communicated from one location to a remote location. In particular, while it would be desirable to transmit such images over a relatively low access cost network such as conventional telephone lines, the transfer rates currently available over such public networks, particularly when large numbers of such high resolution images must be transmitted, can be slow. While this situation can be alleviated somewhat by using dedicated networks, including satellite transmission, such methods considerably increase cost. Alternatively, to speed up such transmission, a user can elect to transmit a lower resolution version of the image. However, this obviously results in a received image being less than the ideal higher resolution image a user might desire.
It would be desirable then, to provide a means by which a user can rapidly obtain, at a remote location, an image signal corresponding to a high resolution image without requiring an undue time for communication of such signal, and while avoiding more expensive communication means, while still providing the user with the high resolution image. It would be particularly desirable to provide such a solution in the context of situations where large volumes of high resolution images must be handled and made available to one or more users. Additionally, it would be desirable to provide a method and system which allows a user to simply have an exposed film delivered to any convenient one of a number of locations, at which locations the film is processed and scanned to yield high resolution image set signals, and which allows a user to access the resulting image signals from a remote terminal without having to keep track of which films were delivered to which location. In such a system it would be desirable if the various users can have rapid access to all of the image signals corresponding to their scanned images without the need to use high priced communication means.